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WAYS OF STUDYING HERITAGE LANGUAGES

Sixth Heritage Language InstituteJune 18-22, 2012UCLA

Maria PolinskyHarvard University

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MAIN POINT

Heritage languages amplify phenomena and principles present and operational in the baseline

Therefore, studying heritage languages is critical to our understanding of natural language design

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SETTING THE STAGE

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STARTING POINT: HLS AND BASELINE LANGUAGES Heritage languages bear significant

resemblance to the languages from which they were formed (the baseline) They tend to amplify certain trends that

are already present in these languages

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STARTING POINT:HLS ARE LIKE HAPPY FAMILIES Heritage languages deviate from the

baseline in a number of ways Contrary to expectations, they do not

look enough like the baseline Heritage languages bear significant

resemblance to each other They deviate from the baseline in similar

ways which call for a principled explanation

Is that transfer?

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STARTING POINT: HLS AND LIMITATIONS OF TRANSFER While there are some parallels

between structures/forms in the heritage language and in the dominant language, such parallels are not exhaustive What prevents heritage languages from

transferring all they need from the dominant language?

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HERITAGE LANGUAGES AS A SOURCE OF LINGUISTIC DATA Viewpoint A: Learning about heritage

languages Arriving at a comprehensive description of

heritage languages, understanding their structure, processing, and origins

Viewpoint B: Learning from heritage languages Using heritage languages as a new source

of data feeding into theory construction

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WHY BOTHER WITH HERITAGE LANGUAGES? New material for understanding

language in time and space

− Language origins− Language acquisition

Better theory of acquisition, development, and evolution

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WHY BOTHER WITH HERITAGE LANGUAGES? New angle on the core of human

language capacity Hence, new window on Universal

Grammar

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WHY BOTHER WITH HERITAGE LANGUAGES? New data for testing our theories of

language structure and language processing− Language universals

− Language structure

Better theory of language

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OUTLINE FOR THE REST

Getting the relevant data: What populations to compare

Getting the relevant data: Methodologies for studying heritage languages

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GETTING THE RELEVANT DATA: COMPARING POPULATIONS

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COMPARISON POPULATIONS

Four- way comparison: HL adults HL children Monolingual adults Monolingual children

This allows us to separate attrition from incomplete acquisition

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DISTINGUISHING INCOMPLETE ACQUISITION FROM ATTRITION Do child learners (future heritage

speakers) and adult heritage speakers have the same morphosyntactic deficits? If a child and an adult deviate from the

baseline in the same way, the feature has not been acquired

If a child and an adult perform differently, the feature has been acquired but lost/reanalyzed

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INCOMPLETE ACQUISITION: A CHILD IN THE HEAD

Adult heritage language = fossilized child language, with the level of fossilization roughly corresponding to the age of interruption?

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RUSSIAN NOUNS IN PALATAL CONSONANT (CJ) Feminine: cerkov’ ‘church’, tetrad’

‘notebook’, krovat’ ‘bed’, sol’ ‘salt’, ten’ ‘shadow’

Masculine: put’ ‘way’, dožd’ ‘rain’, portfel’ ‘briefcase’, kalendar’ ‘calendar’

Standard child language error: feminine nouns are interpreted as

masculine, up to age 7;0 (Gvozdev 1961) independent of frequency

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RUSSIAN: CORRECT AGREEMENT WITH FEMININE AND MASCULINE NOUNS IN CJ

Masculine correct

Feminine corect

Masculine incorrect

Feminine incorrect

0102030405060708090

L1 (N=12, av. age 7;2)HL children (N=18, av. age 8;1)HL adults (N=27, av. age 27)

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RUSSIAN NOUNS IN PALATAL CONSONANT (CJ) Gender of feminine nouns in palatal

consonant is acquired late and poses a problem for monolingual and heritage children alike

This incompletely acquired feature then persists in HL adults

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ADULT HERITAGE GRAMMAR IS DIFFERENT

Adult incomplete grammar undergoes attrition and is different from the “initial state” represented by heritage child grammar

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RELATIVE CLAUSES

Acquired early (2;0-2;6) Universal preference for subject

relatives Error rate (wrong head choice), ages

4-6: English : 10%-13% (multiple studies) Indonesian: 11% (Tjung 2006) Mandarin Chinese: 3.9% (Hsu et al.

2006, 2009) Turkish: 4% (Slobin 1985) Russian: 3.7%-4.2% (Fedorova 2005,

Polinsky 2008, 2011)

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OBJECT RELATIVE CLAUSE COMPREHENSION: % TOKENS CORRECT, KOREAN

Adults (C/H): 17/21, age 24; children (C/H): 6/23, age 7

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RELATIVE CLAUSES

HL children perform on par with age-matched monolingual controls and significantly outperform HL adults

The syntax of relative clauses undergoes a reanalysis across the lifespan and presents a case of attrition

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SEPARATING THE EFFECTS

Same HL with a different dominant language: minimize the effect of transfer

Structuring the tests in such a way that we could go against the transfer (Russian relative clauses, Polinsky 2011)

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SEPARATING THE EFFECTS

Distinguish heritage speakers from heritage language learners

So far, no direct comparison between heritage speakers “in the wild” and HL re-learners Many subjects of HL studies are drawn

from HL classes (a self-selected group)

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COMPARISON POPULATIONS

Are heritage speakers like L1 or like L2?

To answer this question, we need to compare advanced L2 learners with heritage speakers

An outstanding question: how to match the two groups? Level of L2 vs HL Criteria to be used

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GETTING THE RELEVANT DATA: METHODOLOGIES

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THE VALUE OF DIFFERENT METHODOLOGIES Assessment Behavioral studies Neuroimaging

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ASSESSMENT

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APPROACHING VARIANCE

Extreme variation with regard to proficiency in heritage speakers C.f. three-stage model (Polinsky & Kagan 2007) (i) Acrolectal HS: high proficient, near-native

speakers of Russian, maximally close to competent monoling

(ii) Mesolectal HS: clear deficencies if compared to monolingual

(iii) Basilectal HS: lowest-proficiency speaker, maximally removed from native attainment, may have never acquired literacy in Russian

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RATE OF SPEECH (RoS) CORRELATIONS Does the rate of speech (measured

in words per minute) correlate with any other independent properties of heritage language?

An ongoing project, but some results are already available

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RoS ILLUSTRATION: RUSSIAN GENDER Baseline Russian: three genders (M,

F, N) Heritage Russian: three or two

genders (two groups of HS) Three gender group: phonological

reorganization Two gender group: Neuter nouns are re-

analyzed as feminine

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END-STRESSED NEUTERS

Two strategies: Neuter retained Neuter reanalyzed as a feminine

Can the strategy be predicted based on other properties of an individual speaker?

Yes: strong correlation between rate of speech and neuter retention: Higher RoS ~ three genders (neuter

retention) Lower Ros ~ two genders

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Correlation between the use of strategy and rate of speech NNEU: average rate 86.1 w/min (N=15) NFEM: average rate 45.4 w/min (N=16) Baseline controls: average rate 104.2 w/min

(N=20)

2-Gender 3-Gender baseline0

20

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60

80

100

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END-STRESSED NEUTERS

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RATE OF SPEECH CORRELATIONS Rate of speech (measured in words per

minute) may serve as a predictor of heritage speakers’ overall language proficiency

Advantages: Does not rely on literacy skills A very simple measure

Disadvantages: More proof of the concept needed Unclear what RoS actually reflects

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BEHAVIORAL METHODS

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PRODUCTION

Production can be used for preliminary data mining

In assessing production, aim for a controlled setting Video descriptions Maps Sentence completion Elicited imitation

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HERITAGE ENGLISH

Work conducted in Israel by Arun Viswanath (Harvard) and in France by Benjamin Gittelson (Columbia U)

14-year old speaker describing a cartoon episode… (Israeli English)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM8qgX3vbuI

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HERITAGE ENGLISHHe wante- he go- he took from zeh garbage a cigarette, and, and zen he saw zeh police, said hello, and zen he, just, em, just, frew zeh garbage can- can, zen, eh, zeh rabbit, em, how it’s called…flowered his flowers, and zen hewanted to eat him, so he took a rope and went up, an- and zeh rabbit saw him, and he was wif scissors, so he cut ze- cut zeh rope, and zen he fell into zeh police…’s car. (So how did he notice the rabbit in the first place?)Because eh, zeh rabbit wan- eh, wer- because he flowered zeh, his flowers, uh, one, on- two drops went on him. (So where did the drops go?)One on his cigarette, and zeh, zeh fire, eh…not burned…blew out? And one on his nose.

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FRUIT CARTS

Speaker describes a map to a confederate who moves objects on the screen (Gómez Gallo et al. 2007)

Speakers produce spontaneous instructions to the confederate

Confederate does not give verbal feedback

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HOW IT WORKS

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CONTROLLED PRODUCTION: CHINESE FRUITCARTS Mandarin Chinese, baseline: Beijing

dialect 13 native speakers and 17 heritage

speakers of advanced proficiency in spoken Mandarin However, five HL speakers do not have

the knowledge of formal registers

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BASIC FACTS ABOUT WORD ORDER IN MANDARIN

Basic word order is SVO, but attributes including relative clauses precede the head noun

Nouns occur with classifiers Use of numerals with nouns is

associated with indefiniteness Locative expressions: in most cases,

locative PPs appear before the VP Serial verbs are widely used, and some

serialization correlates with the presence of the ba-construction

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PROXY

Proxy: noun filling the gap after the relative clause when the real head precedes the relative clause. For instance:

把   小   三角形    [RC角上    有 圆点的 ]   图形      移    到  北京ba small triangle corner have ball

de     figure    move to Beijing REAL HEAD RELATIVE CLAUSE PROXY

‘Move the small triangle with a ball on its corner to Beijing.’

NO PROXIES IN HL PRODUCTION

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NUMERAL PHRASES

In Mandarin, numeral phrases include numerals and classifiers: 一   个  三角形 ‘ a triangle’yi ge sanjiaoxingNUM CLF NOUN

Generally, numeral phrases are considered indefinite In our corpus, native controls used numerals less, esp. when the theme expression had modifiers (hence, was more likely to be definite)

Heritage speakers show lack of awareness of this subtle semantic feature

NUMERALS

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WORD ORDER

Controls use the ba-construction, which is problematic for heritage speakers

Controls use prenominal relative clauses, heritage speakers use postnominal relatives

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RELATIVE CLAUSE PLACEMENT:NATIVE SPEAKERS Relative clauses (RC) precede the

head noun Most native speakers strictly follow

this rule[RC角上   有       菱形    的 小 ] [Head Noun正方形 ] corner has a diamond ADN

small square‘a small square that has a diamond at its corner’

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RELATIVE CLAUSE PLACEMENT:HERITAGE SPEAKERS Heritage speakers tend to put the

relative clause after the head noun在  北京，放一个大的三角形       边上            有一个点的In Beijing, put a big triangle the hypotenuse has a dot ADNIn Beijing, put a big triangle that has a dot on its hypotenuse Possible reasons:

Late planning in production, due to the overall complexity of the theme description

Interference from English

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VERBS VS. VERB COMPOUNDS Another difficulty contributing to the

lack of ba-construction in heritage speakers: use of verb compounds

Heritage speakers show a strong tendency to use simplex verbs in all their constructions

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COMPOUND VERBS: CONTROL VS. HSs

Native speakers Heritage speakers

Proxy construction Yes No

Numerals Less likely More likely

Word order 1) ba-construction2) Attributes before

head noun

1) Rigid SVO2) Attributes after

head noun

Verb complexity Verb compound Single verb

NATIVE SPEAKERS VS. HERITAGE SPEAKERS

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“PROOF OF THE CONCEPT”

The Fruit Cart experimental design is an effective method if eliciting production form heritage speakers in such a way that their output is well constrained

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OUTLINE OF THE SECTION

Comparison populations Data obtained from heritage

speakers Production Comprehension

Methodologies Where next?

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COMPREHENSION

Allows researchers to focus on the areas that may cause difficulty

Borrow from the playbook of other fields: L1, L2, clinical populations, fieldwork experiments Types of phenomena Methodologies

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ON METHODOLOGY

Grammaticality Judgment Tasks (GJTs) Points of general concern:

What is the exact nature of grammaticality? Dichotomous or gradient? What is the role of extragrammatical factors?

Point of methodological concern: Absence of rigorous control techniques

An additional worry: Heritage speakers show a notoriously high rate of

null responses on GJT (Polinsky 2006)

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ON METHODOLOGY

Avoiding GJT (Schütze 1996, Tremblay 2005)

Alternatives: Response time Rating or magnitude estimation Eye tracking (Irina Sekerina’s work)

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SOME GENERAL TIPS

Optimize the comprehension conditions for heritage speakers Allows us to make sure we are not

dealing with bottleneck effects Speed/add distractions to

comprehension conditions for the controls

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COMPREHENSION RESEARCH: A COMMON PARADIGM Self-paced reading (SPR), an

established tool (Just et al. 1982, Mitchell 2004)

Timing is regular except for areas of difficulty

Problem: HL speakers have difficulty reading, even if the alphabet is the same

How can one extend the SPR paradigm to populations that do not read?

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POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Taking lessons from researchers for whom reading is irrelevant, inappropriate, or an unwelcome confound Sign language research Child language acquisition research Research on clinical populations Phonological investigations

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ANOTHER COMMON PARADIGM IN COMPREHENSION Sentence-picture matching (SPM),

also well-established (Bamber 1969, Carey & Lockhart 1973,

Clark & Chase 1972, Frost 1972, Seymour 1974, Shepard 1967, a.o.)

Present acoustic stimuli and record response time for a stimulus-to-picture matching task

Common in the fields of aphasiology and child language acquisition

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COMPARING SPR AND SPM

An unknown: Do SPR and SPM produce comparable results?

Test case: Relative clause processing

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RELATIVE CLAUSE PROCESSING Subject relatives are easier to process

(SPR: Traxler et al. 2002; ERP: King & Kutas 1995; PET: Stromswold et al. 1996; fMRI: Just et al. 1996; Eye-tracking: Traxler et al. 2002…)

Cross-linguistic advantage of subject relatives (Dutch: Frazier 1987; German: Mecklinger et

al. 1995; Hebrew: Arnon 2005; Japanese: Miyamoto & Nakamura 2003; Korean: Kwon et al. 2006; Russian: Polinsky 2011…)

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COMPARING SPR AND SPM: RUSSIAN Subject preference in the processing

of relative clauses in Russian (Levy et al. 2007, submitted; Polinsky 2011, 2012)

Subject and object RCs can have the same word order

NPi [whichNOM __i Verb NPACC] = Subject Relative

NPi [whichACC __i Verb NPNOM] = Object Relative

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RUSSIAN: SELF-PACED READING

Tim

e in

ms

Subject Object

Polinsky 2012; Polinsky & Fedorova in prep.

*

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RUSSIAN: SENTENCE-PICTURE MATCHING Subjects see two pictures on

computer screen followed by a sound file

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RUSSIAN: SENTENCE-PICTURE MATCHING

Tim

e in

ms

Subject Object

*

Polinsky & Fedorova in prep.

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INTERIM SUMMARY

Heritage studies can re-appropriate well-established paradigms from other experimental fields Picture matching in lieu of SPR Possible use of self-paced listening, also

used in L1 and L2 research (Marinis 2003)

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INTERIM SUMMARY

Heritage studies can re-appropriate well-established paradigms from other experimental fields

Using visual world paradigms in general will provide rich results: more need for eye-tracking in HL studies

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WHERE NEXT AND WHY?

From behavior to brain From modules to interfaces From homogenous sub-populations

to assessing variance

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FROM BEHAVIOR TO BRAIN

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OUTLINE OF THE SECTION

General observations: Short term exposure A case study Emerging imaging results (so far for L2)

Some practical thoughts: Tools for developing metalinguistic awareness

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A CASE STUDY: POLISH RE-LEARNING Heritage Polish subject, SP

Born in Los Angeles, Polish only till 4;5, rapid switch to English by 5;2 (self-reported)

Comprehension only at 21; impeded as tested in lexical decision, picture matching, and rating tasks

Re-exposure at 24: went to Warsaw for a year

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RE-LEARNING UP… AND DOWN

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ADOLESCENT SHORT-TERM L2 LEARNERS (Stein et al. 2010) 10 English-speaking learners of

German in Switzerland 16.5 – 18 years old (mean 17.5)

Tested After three weeks (following an

introductory course) Five months later

Test performance correlated with increase in gray matter density

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ADOLESCENT SHORT-TERM L2 LEARNERS (Stein et al. 2010) Increase in gray matter density over

five months correlated positively with difference in proficiency (measured by improved test scores) in Left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) Left anterior temporal lobe (ATL)

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ADOLESCENT SHORT-TERM L2 LEARNERS (Stein et al. 2010)

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SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS (Stein et al. 2010)

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WHAT TO MAKE OF THIS FINDING? Gray matter density in language-

related areas increases in as little as five months of instruction in country (even with a huge dialect difference)

This increase correlates with the amount learned

This again suggests brain growth stimulated by effective interaction with the second language

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WHAT TO MAKE OF THIS FINDING? Even a small amount of input in the target

language changes its neurological representation and may also have behavioral consequences

By focusing on HL learners we do not always tap into the depths of language attrition/incomplete acquisition

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FROM BEHAVIOR TO BRAIN

ERP measures: brain/behavior dissociations

Grammar University students learning Spanish

for the first time

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TOKOWICZ & MACWHINNEY (2005) Violations of tense (similar to English) Su abuela *cocinando/cocina muy bien His grandmother *cooking / cooks very well Violations of gender (no parallel in English) Ellos fueron a *un/una fiesta They went to a party Violations of number (English has it, but not

here) *El/los niños están jugando The boys are playing

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TOKOWICZ & MACWHINNEY (2005): ACCURACY DATA AT CHANCE (FOR UNACCEPTABLE)

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TENSE (SIMILAR TO ENGLISH)

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TOKOWICZ & MACWHINNEY (2005): ACCURACY DATA AT CHANCE (FOR UNACCEPTABLE)

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GENDER (NO PARALLEL IN ENGLISH)

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TOKOWICZ & MACWHINNEY (2005) SUMMARY University students again showed a

brain/behavior dissociation: Their acceptability judgment responses

were at chance But their brain responses reliably

differentiated grammatical from ungrammatical sentences

In this respect, their brain responses looked like those of native speakers

- Given cognitive and linguistic advantage enjoyed by HLLs, it is natural to capitalize on these benefits in the classroom

- Capitalizing on linguistic/metalinguistic benefits: introduce linguistic reasoning in the HLL classroom

BUILDING ON HLLS’ ADVANTAGES

Precedent: Linguistic problem sets have been used in the past to teach other subjects Honda & O’Neil (1995) use linguistic exercises

to teach the scientific method to middle- and high-school students.

O’Connor (1980) uses linguistic-based phonology exercises to improve the English pronunciation of non-native English speakers by giving them a fuller sense of the underlying rules governing the patterns and distributions of sounds.

LINGUISTIC PROBLEM SETS IN HLL CLASSROOMS

- To develop and enhance analytical thinking about their language, in and outside the classroom

- To serve as a lead-in to the naturalistic literature, which is crucial in HL classrooms

- To play to the HLLs’ strengths in metalinguistic awareness

- To help HLLs overcome deficits by including them in the exercise material

LINGUISTIC PROBLEM SETS IN HLL CLASSROOMS: GOALS

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LINGUISTIC PROBLEM SETS IN THE TEACHING OF HERITAGE SPANISH Leslie, Siena. 2012. The use of

linguistics to improve the teaching of heritage language Spanish. BA Thesis, Harvard University.

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~herpro/site/Research.html

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WHAT WORKS

Re-exposure Explicit metalinguistic instruction How well do they work?

Even short term exposure seems to have an effect

The perseverance of language improvement is yet to be explored

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WHERE NEXT?

Ask a question that is relevant for linguistic theory

Use heritage populations to answer this question: Compare adults and children,

monolinguals, L2s, and HLs Use proven methodologies—they are

there for you! Feed the results back to the theory

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THANK YOU

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

People: Abbas BenmamounOlga KaganRobert Kluender Oksana LalekoBeth LevinLauren MitchellSilvina MontrulOmer PremingerNina RadkevichIrina SekerinaArun ViswanathMing XiangBoyan Zhang

Funding: NSF, National Heritage Language Resource Center (UCLA), Department of Education, Davis Center (Harvard), Rockefeller Center (Harvard), Center for Research in Language (UCSD), Max Planck Institute